


Angel of Mercy

by Ultra



Series: All Our Happy Endings [3]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Origin Story, F/M, Guardian Angels, Mystery, Past Lives, The Dark One (Once Upon a Time)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-12
Updated: 2013-04-12
Packaged: 2020-03-06 00:43:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18840148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ultra/pseuds/Ultra
Summary: Rumpelstiltskin had his reasons for bringing Belle to the Dark Castle as caretaker. He believes she has been taking care of him for a very long time.





	Angel of Mercy

**Author's Note:**

> originally written for walkwithheroes on Livejournal, as part of the Rumbelle Exchange, Spring 2013.

There was no way she could have known she wore a face he already knew. Rumpelstiltskin was certain that coincidence did not exist, and so the Gods had to have been playing him, evening up the balance as it were. The Dark One must be punished for being the abomination he had become, even as his rescue seemed to be at hand.

It was hundreds of years now that he had walked the worlds in his present form, and yet she had seen him before. Not the little princess he had spied on in her Papa’s castle, that now graced his own home, but she shared that face, those shining eyes and the same tempered smile. It was a remarkable match and the strangest of feelings had stirred in Rumpelstiltskin’s heart when he looked upon her and remembered the first time...

 

Tonight was the night, the last before Baelfire was taken away. It was act now or forever regret, Rumpelstiltskin knew. To control the Dark One or even take his power, it scared him more than anything else ever had, but he would not run away, not this time. The old beggar man’s advice was well to be taken, for the alternative was too cruel a fate. After all he had lost, the old spinner could not bear to see his son dragged away.

“You know this is wrong,” said a voice in the dark.

Rumpelstiltskin startled from his place by the fire, glancing back at where Bae slept. They were the only two here, his son getting as much sleep as he could before they must head to the castle and steal the dagger. Rumpel had stayed up by the fire, contemplating what came next, when suddenly this voice spoke to him, soft and feminine.

“Who’s there?” he called warily into the shadows. “Show yourself, you coward!”

“Of all people to use the word coward...” she replied with laughter in her tone as she finally stepped into the light.

She was beautiful, there was absolutely no question about that. Dressed immaculately in blue and white silk, Rumpelstiltskin was sure she was some noble woman or similar. How she had come to be in his humble abode he had no clue, but dropped to his one good knee on instinct.

“Please, stand up,” she urged him, the moment he bowed before her, offering a hand that he dare not actually take.

Rumpelstiltskin pulled himself back up and sat on his stool by the fire place, sure he should not in such a presence, and yet oddly compelled to do so anyway. The lady before him took no offence. Indeed, she sat herself opposite him in the old rocking chair.

“Who are you? Why are you here?” he asked all at once the questions that would not leave his mind.

This was the most extraordinary twist in his tale of woe. First a visitor to tell him how to overpower the Dark One, and now this young lady of infinite beauty and probably noble blood. Rumpel had no idea how she had come to be here or why, and yet he was strangely unafraid.

“I come with a warning,” she told him then, eyes fixed on the fire as she spoke in a particular lilting accent, the like of which he had never heard before. “You seek to control very dark powers, Rumpelstiltskin. It could be your undoing.”

“How...?” he frowned hard as he stared across at her in the dim light, forcing his voice to remain low as Bae stirred in his bed. “You know my name and my business, madam, yet I know nothing of yours.”

She did not answer his request directly, her gaze remaining on the fire as she raised her hands a moment as if to warm them. Just when Rumpelstiiltskin started to believe she was just some mad woman who had since ceased to hear him at all, she turned to him and spoke seriously.

“I am here to tell you what you should already know for yourself,” she explained, reaching to lightly take one of his hands in both of her own. “Be brave, Rumpelstiltskin. Do the right thing. Do not give into the darkness that has started this war. Be better than that, as we know you can be,” she implored him.

“The right thing...” he echoed. “The right thing has to be protecting, Bae, no matter the cost,” he insisted.

The disappointment on the woman’s face was as haunting as her looks were beautiful, and all that Rumpelstiltskin could see. His eyes would not be torn away until all at once a flash of light threatened to blind him.

Seconds later, he awoke in his own rocking chair, staring into the crackling fire, wondering at what must have been a most vivid dream.

 

Though he never forgot the woman with her fine eyes and deep morals, even after he let the dark power come over him, Rumpelstiltskin had always thought her a dream and nothing more. For weeks and months he laboured under such a falsehood, until that fateful night when he lost Baelfire to the land without magic.

It was on his walk back from the portal site, after his angry confrontation with the Blue Fairy. His fury was big and black, and all-consuming. He wanted to tear the world to shreds, to bend every part of it to his will if that was what it took. Such was his love for Baelfire both then and still now. Rumpelstiltskin remembered the events so clearly, the night when he came to realise that the beauty who had tried to save him once did not feel he was beyond help yet, and she was very definitely not a dream.

 

“You let him go,” said that vaguely familiar voice, causing every inch of Rumpelstiltskin’s reptilian skin to tingle. “After all the trouble you went through to keep him at your side, and now he’s gone.”

The Dark One turned two full circles before he found her, hidden in the shadows on the trees. This time her dress was in all golds and greens, but shimmering as bright as the stars as she moved out into a patch of pale moonlight.

“Whatever you are, dearie,” he said with a twisted grin. “Know that I am infinitely more powerful now than the pathetic creature you met before,” he warned, pointing a nail into his own chest.

“Most power has its limitations,” she smiled right back at him, not in the least afraid or even slightly concerned by his potential threats. “Love ought to over-ride all, and yet, yours doesn’t.”

It took a hell of a woman, a hell of a person in general, to stand before the Dark One and speak in such a way. Rumpelstiltskin did not know whether to be in awe of this creature or strike her down for daring to challenge him. 

“Don’t presume you can speak about my son and live,” he snarled at her, though his dangerous smile remained.

“Don’t presume that everyone and everything cowers before the darkness of your power,” she shot back, all sweet and innocent in looks still, but with an air of defiance in her tone and countenance. “I am not afraid of you, Rumpelstiltskin, but your son was. He is free of what you have become now, and that is as it should be.”

White-hot anger bubbled inside of the Dark One. It didn’t take much for him to snap and rain a torrent of his darkest magic onto the creature before him. He screamed in pain when that power bounced back off the woman before him, scalding his scaly skin before he could move away a step. The mysterious woman bit back a laugh.

“I come to give you a warning, Rumpelstiltskin,” she continued to speak her important message, even as he peered at her like a bug under a lens. “Do not give in to the anger and pain of your son’s loss. So many lives will be ruined by your dark ambitions...”

“And who cares about that?” he asked too loudly, and with flamboyant hand gestures he was becoming well known for. “My life is already in ruins, dearie,” he reminded her, striding forward to get in her face. “Why should all others not suffer as I do?” he asked her out-right.

“You have learnt nothing,” she sighed in clear disappointment. “And yet I leave you with my warning, hoping you will take heed, Rumpelstiltskin. Do not give in to the darkness that has taken root in you. Be stronger than this, as we know you can be.”

The words were oddly familiar, so much like those she spoke to him before, he was sure. Thinking about it so hard brought his gaze away from her own eyes, and when he looked up again, she was gone.

 

The second appearance of the mysterious woman, who had to be far more than a mere mortal, stopped Rumpelstiltskin but for a day in his plans. His love for Baelfire was all that powered him, his need to get to his boy all he thought of or considered. The rest of the people in this land and the next be damned, he had to get his son back.

To put such a plan in motion was always going to take time and patience, but as the Dark One, Rumpel knew he had all the time in the world. So many years he spent perfecting his plot, eventually leading to a curse that would take him to that land without magic, where Bae would probably be grown by now, but still his son, his boy.

Rumpelstiltskin thought little of the strange and spirited woman who would warn him off his plans, though she never completely left his mind. In dreams she would come and haunt him, reminding him how far down the dark path he had wandered. Still, he took no heed. His goal was absolute and he would reach it, come hell or high water, or worse.

It was only when the second Ogre Wars reached their dizzying heights, and Rumpel received word that Sir Maurice wanted his assistance, that he made a realisation shocking enough to genuinely stun even the Dark One himself. It would be ill advised to make a deal without first having all the information. The nobleman’s promises of gold meant nothing to Rumpelstiltskin. After all, he made gold! He would want another prize in payment for his assistance, and on going to the castle to search out what he might like best, he stumbled upon the girl.

They called her Belle. She was a mere mortal woman, he knew, and yet she wore the face of that same angel of mercy who had come to save him, not once but twice, in his long and darkened life. She had no idea, of course. Too stunned by his appearance and manner was Belle to be anything but what she seemed, a nobleman’s daughter with more spirit than such a person could usually muster. Still, it was intriguing to the Dark One that she looked so much like she who had tried to save his disappearing soul in the past.

Bringing Belle to his home as ‘caretaker’ seemed like the greatest of plans, perhaps the best deal he would make in oh so many years. Rumpelstiltskin never once thought that he would become attached to her, that she could come to care for him. When he offered Sir Maurice the deal, to trade his darling daughter for an end to the ogres trying to take his village, Rumpel was not surprised the man said no. He was even less shocked when Belle herself gave her will to the Dark One without pause. Perhaps the mortal version of this woman was as selfless and determined as the apparition Rumpelstiltskin had refused twice already. She would certainly prove more determined in her need to save him, but even Rumpel had known nothing of this as he walked out of the castle with his arm round the waist of his prize.

True love could break any curse, such Belle would prove to him, he just hadn’t known it then, but neither had she at that moment. The Gods knew what they were doing, before and again now. They were getting their own way in the end, and nothing would over-rule what they decided, even it meant handing an angel to the devil to make it happen.


End file.
